Download Scientists and the media: the struggle for legitimacy in climate

Scientists and the media: the struggle for
legitimacy in climate change and
conservation science
RICHARD. J. LADLE, PAUL JEPSON and ROBERT J. WHITTAKER
Biodiversity Research Group, School of Geography and the Environment, University of
Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK
Despite the uncertainties associated with forecasts of the possible negative effects of
climate change on natural environments, such research is often widely reported in the news
media. Here we review the presentation in the UK news media and on the internet of
an academic study published in Nature, forecasting future global extinctions as a result of
climate change. The results and conclusions of the study were widely misrepresented,
especially in the news media, to make the consequences seem more catastrophic and the
timescale shorter. Representations of the original article on the internet were more variable,
with several sites ranked highly on popular search engines being overtly critical of the
underlying science. We suggest that such polarised representations of environmental
science are indicative of a ‘struggle for legitimacy’ between environmentalist and antienvironmentalist groups, with potential negative consequences for public trust in science.
Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are influencing the planet’s
climate, a vigorous debate has continued in the global news media as to whether climate
change is really happening,1 and what the consequences may be for humans and ecosystems. Both environmentalists (mainly campaigning environmental NGOs) and climate
sceptics (mainly not-for-profit organisations, business funded foundations, and private
individuals) seek to convince the public of the legitimacy of their beliefs through the
appropriation and dissemination of scientific information.
The communication and interpretation of science to the general public is achieved
through a variety of media, the most important of which are the traditional print media,
television, radio, and, now, electronic channels such as the internet. Because ‘the media’
are viewed collectively as such a powerful tool for influencing public opinion, it is understandable that environmentalists will want to maximise the exposure of science supporting
their agenda. Unfortunately, the careful, measured language of science is not well suited
to the soundbite sensationalism that is the typical mode of communication of most of
the contemporary news media. The distortion of information that occurs as science is
translated into the language of the popular media has led to accusations of press sensationalism both by scientists2 and by an increasingly influential array of ‘anti-environmentalist’
and sceptical individuals3 and organisations. However, it has also been argued that sensationalism is acceptable if it brings an environmental message (for instance about the
potential ecological effects of climate change) to the attention of the public and polity.4
DOI 10.1179/030801805X42036
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In this review we take as a starting premiss that environmental scientists (as distinct
from, for example, environmental activists) have a prime responsibility to report findings
that are likely to be of concern to society, and to do so in as accurate, objective and simple
a fashion as possible. In order to achieve balance, accuracy and impact (i.e. improved
public understanding of environmental science), scientists need to understand better the
process by which their science is transformed into news, including how different political
and social groups seek to influence this conversion. As a contribution to improved understanding, we have reviewed the flow, translation and transformation of information from
a scientific paper on climate change and species extinction into a national and international
media story. We also reflect on our own (eventful and somewhat naive) interventions in
this process, and assess the representation of this same story on the internet. Finally, we go
on to discuss ways in which environmental groups and other organisations may seek to
legitimise their positions through the appropriation of peer reviewed science.
CASE STUDY: PREDICTING EXTINCTIONS IN A WARMING WORLD
On 7 January 2004, the journal Nature published a study that modelled the potential effects
of global warming on the distributional ranges of certain groups of land animals and
plants.5 The results of the study suggested that given a number of key assumptions and
under ‘moderate’ climate change scenarios, between fifteen and thirty-seven per cent of
the 1103 species considered within the study would be ‘committed to extinction’ by 2050.
The authors described these percentages as being ‘an estimate of proportions of species
committed to future extinctions as a consequence of climate change over the next
50 years’, and ‘not the number of species that will become extinct during this period’.
Furthermore, they noted, ‘decades may elapse between [the reduction of appropriate
habitat through climate change] and extinction’. In short, the study claimed that if the
assumptions and predictions of the model were valid, then a proportion of the species
studied would eventually occupy environmental conditions incompatible with their long
term survival.
This study received global press coverage. We reviewed twenty-nine reports in the UK’s
national and local newspapers and found a systematic pattern of errors in twenty-six of
them (Table 1). The most significant misrepresentation of the study’s findings was the
frequently repeated contention that over a million species would go extinct due to global
warming by 2050 (twenty-one reports). Just two reports explained that only a few species
would actually be extinct by 2050; two reports went so far as to suggest that a third of all
the world’s species would become extinct. No report specified the full reported range of
uncertainty, which was between 5.6 and 78.6 per cent of species committed to extinction
due to climate change.
In seven reports, the study’s lead author, Professor Chris Thomas, was quoted as saying:
‘If the projections can be extrapolated globally, and to other groups of land animals
and plants, our analyses suggest that well over a million species could be threatened with
extinction as a result of climate change.’ This powerful statement, which amongst other
assumptions must presuppose a particular (large) estimate of global biodiversity, was not
qualified with any information on the basis of the extrapolation, or the great uncertainties
concerning global species richness estimates.6 As a consequence, the public was in effect
asked to accept this dire prediction at face value. In contrast, a university level education in
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Table 1
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Survey of newspaper reports: secondary items include letters and editorials
Primary reports
Secondary items
Claims
Million or more species extinct
Species extinct by 2050
Quarter of all life forms extinct
Quarterof all land animals/plants extinct
Third of all life forms extinct
Third of all land animals/plants extinct
14
10
1
7
2
1
7
3
2
1
0
0
Qualifications
Based on millions of unidentified species
Only a few actually extinct by 2050
Phrase ‘committed to extinction’ used
0
2
1
0
0
0
the natural sciences teaches that the number of species described is in the region of
one and three quarter million;7 the number of yet undiscovered species of arthropods is
probably in the range of four to six million,8 rather than the much used value of about
thirty million.9
The origin of the majority of the cruder generalisations and extrapolations in the media
can be traced back to the original press releases and agency newswires (see adjacent figure
for a schematic representation of the role of press releases in the translation of science into
news). The first release (7 January 2004) was from the University of Leeds, the institution
The conversion of science into news
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generating the research, and carried the headline ‘Climate change threatens a million
species with extinction’. It is here that the ‘million species’ reference first appears, along
with the unattributed claim that a quarter of land animals and plants may go extinct. In
fairness, the press release then goes to some lengths to explain that extinctions will occur
‘eventually’ [their emphasis] and not in the next fifty years. The resulting newswires from the
big press agencies varied in their veracity. The Dow Jones International News newswire (7
January) was relatively cautious in tone: ‘Hundreds of species of land plants and animals
around the globe could vanish or be on the road to extinction over the next 50 years
if global warming continues’. On the other hand Reuters’ newswire (7 January) stated
that ‘Global warming could wipe out a quarter of all species of plants and animals
on earth by 2050’. We suspect that this was the basis for many of the mistakes and
exaggerations communicated in the UK press the following day.
Some senior politicians were quick to align themselves with the notion of impending
environmental calamity. For example Margot Wallstrom, EU Environment Commissioner,
wrote in the Guardian newspaper that ‘Many people had a lot to say about the recently
published study that suggests global warming could wipe out a third of the planet’s species
by 2050’, and the Irish Green Party’s Leader John Barry publicly threw his support behind
a Friends of the Earth campaign to reduce carbon emissions and stop ‘the extinction of a
quarter of the world’s species by 2050’. When the research was discussed in the UK House
of Commons, Margaret Beckett, UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs, stated that the ‘study that has been published today indicates that between 15 per
cent and 37 per cent of land species in the area that was studied could face extinction by
2050 [our emphasis]. However, it is important for the House to understand that the
impact of the highest predictions of global warming would have an even more disastrous
effect. So it is not an exaggerated report that assumes catastrophe; it refers to the expected
impact of climate change’ (quoted in Hansard, 8 January 2004). Since these proportions
were not projected to face extinction by 2050, then her interpretation, if the not the report
itself, could indeed be accused of exaggeration.
In the conservation lobby, many of the largest and best known NGOs produced their
own press releases or ran news stories on their websites. WWF-UK went a step further
and used the research in its funding efforts: on 12 January (four days after the bulk of the
news coverage) it mailed its membership on the subject of a ‘conservation emergency!’,
with the opening line ‘you’ve no doubt seen the recent press and television headlines – by
2050 global warming could wipe out one million species of animals and plants’.
INTERNET REPRESENTATIONS
As more people use the web to find and interpret the results of scientific research, the
scientific community needs to focus on how the social and spatial dynamics of web
dissemination might affect public understanding of science. The next generation of webliterate laypersons could easily be misled or polarised, thereby undermining the considered
public debate that underpins effective environmental policy. This topic has so far received
little attention and we are aware of no published studies examining, for instance, how
scientific information is translated and interpreted as it passes through electronic media, or
whether there are any differences between representations of environmental science in the
print and electronic media.
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One thing seems sure: the world wide web gives voices to many groups invisible in the
mainstream press, including some with extreme and unorthodox viewpoints. Unlike in
scientific journals, the science appearing on the web is not subject to external review or
assessment. Consequently, as Stuart Pimm and Jeff Harvey put it, ‘the web is full of
unselected ideas’.10 In the context of the environmental movement, this might be where
we see evidence of a sceptical-environmentalist backlash against the sensationalising
tendencies of the mainstream press.11
To explore how environmental websites represented the Nature article, we reviewed the
fifty most highly ranked sites on the three most popular search engines (Google, Yahoo,
MSN) during the first two weeks of August 2004. To reduce search bias we used a
very simple combination of words and phrases, namely ‘Thomas’, ‘climate change’ and
‘extinction’, linked together with the Boolean operator ‘AND’. When reviewing the sites
we included in our analysis only those that gave some interpretation of the original report.
Sites were classified by a simple typology reflecting ownership and, to some extent,
mission. The categories used were: ‘media’ (19 hits); ‘non-profit’, which included environmental NGOs and ‘anti-environmentalist’ foundations (22); ‘educational’ (mainly universities) (4); ‘personal’ (1); ‘governmental’ (8); and ‘bulletin’ (1). Sites were also categorised
as to whether they questioned the validity of either the results or the conclusions of
the Thomas et al. study. Websites referring directly to the Thomas article were recorded
and ranked for each search using the three search engines, and then a combined rank
was calculated based on the relative usage of each search engine by the general public
according to www.nielsen-netratings.com.
Searches generated fifty-five sites referring directly to the Thomas article and providing
some comment/discussion of its content. Many webpages appearing in the first fifty sites
were rejected from the analysis on the grounds of being completely irrelevant (no mention
of the Thomas article) or providing no interpretation of the paper whatever. Of sites that
matched our criteria for analysis, the majority (thirty-three) were from the US, with the UK
in second place (ten). Sixteen of the sites appeared in the top fifty ranked sites on all three
search engines. In contrast to the news media coverage only twenty-three sites said that
extinction would occur by 2050, and only twenty used the ‘million species or more’
estimate of global extinction. Although only ten sites were overtly critical of the Thomas
article, four of these appeared in the top ten highest ranked sites overall (Table 2).
Table 2
Top ranked internet sites (see text for details)
Rank
Website owner
Critical
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Leeds University (press release)
Conservation International (report)
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Science and Environmental Policy Project
Oxford University (expanded media article)
NASA (report)
Earth Crash Spirit (personal site)
National Geographic
Co2andclimate.org
CBC News
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
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None of the media sites were sceptical of the underlying science or questioned the credibility of the projections. We suspect this is because many of their reports were culled
directly from press releases or the news media. The environmental NGO sites were also
more likely to use the uncritical and sensationalised version of the story that appeared in
the press.
Websites adopting a critical approach to the original paper were mostly those of selfstyled ‘not-for-profit’ foundations with an explicit right-leaning political agenda. These
groups, commonly categorised as ‘anti-environmentalist’, could be considered as an adversary in a fight for credibility with the environmental movement, where both sides use
interpretations of scientific information from peer reviewed journals to legitimise their
views. Interestingly, none of the critical sites based their criticism on the sensationalised
misrepresentations that were so prevalent in the press reports from January 2004, but
instead focused on perceived scientific inadequacies in the Nature article.
For instance, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (third in
our ranking – see Table 2), with a mission to ‘disseminate factual reports and sound commentary on new developments in the world-wide scientific quest to determine the climatic
and biological consequences of the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content’, commented:
it is clear that their results are forced by the calculations, confounded with statistical bias, lack
supporting real-world evidence, and are perforated with speculation. It would thus appear that their
doctrine of ‘massive extinction’ is actually a case of ‘massive extinction bias.’
Another website ranked in our top ten (Table 2), the Science and Environmental Policy
Project define themselves as a ‘non-profit, 501(c)3 educational group, with a mission to
clarify the diverse problems facing the planet and, where necessary, arrive at effective,
cost-conscious solutions’. Once again, their criticism was almost exclusively aimed at the
science underlying the original paper and concluded with the following statement:
Obviously, there is a lot to criticize in this paper. What is surprising is that something with such
inconsistencies and unrealistic assumptions made it unscathed through the review process in such
a prestigious journal as Nature.
It is clear that the wider discourse on the internet has some similarities with the media
coverage, but that the ‘anti-environmentalist’ sites are more likely to try to use scientifically
derived (if spurious) arguments to legitimise their positions. Perhaps significantly, even
though there was criticism of the Thomas paper from within peer reviewed scientific
journals,12 these arguments do not seem to have been adopted by the environmentalsceptic community.
None of the critical websites in our survey criticised or recycled the erroneous
press coverage. This is surprising, and does not seem to support the recent claims
by George Monbiot and his colleagues that the media is propagating and inspiring
anti-environmentalist sentiment:
The science of climate change is under attack – an attack that is coordinated, well-funded and given
constant play in the media. The stronger the scientific consensus on climate change becomes, the
more the media suggest that the science is uncertain.13
Another trend indicated by this limited sample is that even though there are relatively few
anti-environmentalist sites on the internet, they tend to rank high on search engines. There
are several possible reasons for this. First, the search terms we used may have selected sites
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possessing an explicit science bias in their content. Second, many of the media and
environmental NGO sites used existing press coverage that referred to the keywords less
frequently. Third, the climate sceptics may be more adept at designing sites that will rate
highly in internet searches.
To date, scientists and academics more widely have generally shown very little interest in
how their work is represented on the internet. Our survey suggests that a more in-depth
understanding of how science is translated and represented on the internet might be
important for the development of evidence based environmental policy. With more
students at all levels of education getting information from the internet it is also important
that educators understand internet biases in reporting of science and are able to advise
their students how to develop the critical analytical skills needed to sift the information
and make sense of the varying messages.
Pimm and Harvey14 recommend four ways in which the credibility of a site might be
assessed. First, check the data: strong arguments are based on data from primary sources
that are available for scientific scrutiny; spurious and erroneous arguments are often
backed up with data from secondary sources or even hearsay. Second, arguments couched
in hyperbolic language may be masking a lack of understanding or data. Third, check the
credentials of the authors: are they from a respected institution? have they published peer
reviewed articles on the subject under discussion? Finally, it is also worth looking at who
funds the website as this may give some indication of any underlying agendas. However,
even with all these precautions there is huge scope for being misled or misdirected and for
work to appear out of context. For instance, in the course of compiling this review we
were amazed to find a complete Spanish translation of the web-published supplementary
material for our Nature comment on media treatment of the Thomas paper,15 replete with
Oxford University logo, on an Argentinian anti-environmentalist website. Similarly, whilst
the institutional home of an author provides relevant context, the history of science
illustrates that figures close to the heart of the scientific establishment have often got it
seriously wrong: argument by authority is no substitute for rigour in presentation of
arguments.
A case could also be made for the establishment of websites modelled on the ‘sifting
process’ of peer reviewed academic journals, designed to provide unbiased and accurate
dissemination of environmental science. Many individual scientists and research groups
already have their own websites, but these are generally highly technical and/or naive in
their broader policy interpretation. In the present case, we identified few sites that gave a
balanced assessment of the Thomas et al. study. Instead we found a battle for scientific
credibility and legitimacy between factions on either side of the environmental debate.
Where important work such as the Thomas et al. paper comes into the public arena, there
is an obvious need for a definitive, authoritative and realistic web resource written in
accessible language that is explicit about the assumptions and limitations of the work. This
would not, of course, do anything to prevent the work being appropriated and used to
legitimise advocacy of environmental and anti-environmentalist causes, but it would
counter some of the wilder claims made on both sides of the debate.
TRUST AND SCIENTIFIC LEGITIMACY
Because scientific rationalism is a key tenet of contemporary policy, it is crucial that
politicians and policy-makers are informed by a balanced assessment of scientific
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knowledge. Oversimplistic treatments of scientific findings and departures from rational
objectivity risk undermining public trust in the natural sciences and could play into the
hands of anti-environmentalists.
Where scientific results have a high degree of uncertainty, for example forecasts of
potential consequences of climate change on biodiversity,16 there is considerable scope
for media misrepresentation. This places a considerable onus on scientists to report their
science responsibly and without undue exaggeration. Doing so in the non-technical terms
necessary to ensure clarity is vital for maintaining the independence and integrity of public
policy. If the public loses trust in scientists then policy risks being set by vested interests.
Overstating the implications of preliminary research opens environmental science up to
damning critiques by the anti-environmentalist lobby. This could increase public cynicism
and complacency about climate change and loss of biodiversity, in much the same way that
the ‘over-egging’ of intelligence reports on weapons of mass destruction affected public
attitudes concerning politicians’ motives for the Iraq war.
The scientific and conservation community needs to take a responsible attitude towards
disclosure of research findings on climate change, and should seek to inform the public
about the treatment of uncertainty within their analyses. Practical steps might be for
scientists to direct media communication on this topic towards journalists with whom they
have an established intellectual relationship; for high profile journals to pay particular
attention in briefing statements to conveying information as to the limitations of the study
in question; for leading research groups to run and maintain accessible and informative
websites; and for scientists to write to newspaper editors, trustees of major charities and
politicians with clarifications on misleading reportage of their science.
CONCLUSIONS
The case study discussed here demonstrates the use of an environmental science paper
published in a high profile international journal to engender public perception of a ‘hot
crisis’ – an imminent environmental disaster that may affect us all. This will be credible to
the public if the disaster does indeed occur in the timescale suggested, or if a clear
response is seen to avert it. If not, then there is a danger that environmental scientists and
the environmental movement more generally will be seen to be crying wolf and may
accordingly suffer a loss of credibility and legitimacy. Eventually this could lead to public
apathy and even ‘conservation fatigue’, with highly counterproductive outcomes for the
environmental movement. Furthermore, it stands in the way of scientists who use more
conservative, and possibly realistic, assumptions getting their work into the media. For
instance, at least in the short term it would be difficult to persuade a newspaper to give
similar exposure to a peer reviewed paper predicting the extinction of seventy thousand
species by 2200.
We should also not forget that the anti-environmentalist movement, feared to be
powerful in the US, might be especially aware of exaggerated claims. The media, by setting
up such obvious straw men, play straight into the hands of vested interests whose environmental agenda has potentially disastrous consequences for biodiversity and human health.
Ever since Bjorn Lomborg17 published his one-sided but widely reported attack on the
sloppy science and propaganda commonly used by the environmental movement, it has
become increasingly important for scientists and the media to exercise caution in relaying
information with high degrees of uncertainty.
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There are several potential reasons for the widespread misreporting of climate change
science in the media. First, newspaper science editors and journalists may lack a grasp of
the theoretical models, assumptions and extrapolations that characterise much climate
change and conservation science. The perceived need to present stories as soundbites
further promotes oversimplification and hyperbole. Second, science reporters may be
relying too much on secondhand press reports and press releases rather than checking
their facts or going back to the original study, despite the easy online accessibility of
sources such as Nature. Equally, researchers, scientific institutions and journals could take
more care in the preparation of press releases, which often act as a source of much hype
and simplification in the news media.18 Faced with tight deadlines, many journalists may
place an unwarranted degree of trust in the press releases and newswires they receive.
Third, it might serve the interests of particular actors in the chain to ‘sex up’ a story, for
instance by linking climate change to the imminent threat of mass extinctions. By this
means proprietors sell papers, journals generate citations, scientists gain profile and
research funding, conservation charities generate donations, and politicians gain an agenda
that may attract votes and enhance careers.
It is of course all too easy to point to deficiencies in press coverage; it is far harder to
come up with practical solutions for both scientists and journalists. Although not always
possible, careful scrutiny of the original peer reviewed article may often avoid some of the
grossest misrepresentations. Even though environmental editors may not be experts in
the field, they should still be able to derive something from scanning the original work.
However, even top journals let through speculation and inference that can fan the flames
of a media story. A good illustration of this can be seen in a recent article in Science on
population declines of birds, butterflies and vascular plants in the UK whose abstract
concluded, perhaps unwisely, with the suggestion that the study provides evidence that the
‘world is experiencing the sixth major extinction event in its history’.19 Unsurprisingly, the
following day’s headlines hardened the story so that the study was said to provide the first
‘hard evidence’ of the next mass extinction.20
Phone interviews also seem to be an unusually poor way of extracting information.
Sadly it is almost trivially easy to sucker scientists into saying something indiscreet or technically incorrect (a trap we have fallen into ourselves21). Allowing interviewees to check
copy would be one way to rectify some of these problems, although in our experience
journalists generally seem very reluctant to engage in this way.
Finally, scientists should think carefully about promoting work in an emerging field
where the results are still in a preliminary stage of testing or development. A recent report
by the Office of Science Technology and the Wellcome Institute22 concluded that the UK
lacks a framework within which people can access information about new science, allowing them to assess and judge information and its implications. Without such a framework
it is inevitable that we will see many more fights for legitimacy, as advocates of different
environmental philosophies seek to exploit the multiple modes of public communication
available to them.
NOTES
1. S. C. Zehr: ‘Public representations of scientific uncertainty about global climate change’, Public
Understanding of Science, 2000, 9, 85–103.
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2. R. J. Ladle et al.: ‘Crying wolf over risks of extinction’, Nature, 2004, 428, 729; R. J. Ladle: ‘Ecological
science reporting: another victim of global warming?’, British Ecological Society Bulletin, 2004, 35, (4), 12–13.
3. B. Lomborg: The Skeptical Environmentalist; 2001, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
4. L. Hannah and B. Phillips: ‘Extinction coverage worth the inaccuracies’, Nature, 2004, 430, 131.
5. C. D. Thomas et al.: ‘Extinction risk from climate change’, Nature, 2004, 427, 145–148.
6. R. J. Whittaker et al.: ‘Conservation biogeography: assessment and prospect’, Diversity and Distributions,
2005, 11, 3–23.
7. B. Groombridge and M. D. Jenkins: Global Biodiversity: Earth’s Living Resources in the 21st Century; 2000,
Cambridge, World Conservation Press.
8. V. Novotny et al.: ‘Low host specificity of herbivorous insects in tropical forests’, Nature, 2002, 416,
841–844.
9. T. L. Erwin: ‘Tropical forests: their richness in coleoptera and other arthropod species’, Coleopterists
Bulletin, 1982, 36, 74–75.
10. S. Pimm and J. Harvey: ‘The world at our fingertips’, Oikos, 2000, 91, 209–212.
11. R. J. Ladle et al.: ‘Crying wolf’ (see Note 2).
12. W. Thuiller et al.: ‘Biodiversity conservation: uncertainty in predictions of extinction risk’, Nature, 2004,
430, 1 July, doi:10.1038/nature02716; L. B. Buckley and J. Roughgarden: ‘Biodiversity conservation:
effects of changes in climate and land use’, Nature, 2004, 430, 1 July, doi:10.1038/nature02717.
13. G. Monbiot et al.: ‘Time to speak up for climate change science’, Nature, 2005, 434, 559.
14. S. Pimm and J. Harvey: ‘The world at our fingertips’ (see Note 10).
15. R. J. Ladle et al.: ‘Crying wolf’ (see Note 2).
16. R. J. Whittaker et al.: ‘Conservation biogeography’ (see Note 6); W. Thuiller et al.: ‘Biodiversity
conservation’ (see Note 12).
17. B. Lomborg: The Skeptical Environmentalist (see Note 3).
18. S. P. R. Rose: ‘How to (or not to) communicate science’, Biochemical Society Transactions, 2003, 31, 307–312.
19. J. A. Thomas et al.: ‘Comparative losses of British butterflies, birds, and plants and the global extinction
crisis’, Science, 2004, 303, 1879–1881.
20. R. Highfield: ‘Butterfly decline points to sixth mass extinction’, Daily Telegraph, 2004, 19 March, 6.
21. P. Jepson et al.: ‘We get blinded by the lack of science’, Sunday Telegraph, 2004, 9 May, 26 (in response to
E. Day: ‘Charities spread scare stories to boost public donations’, Sunday Telegraph, 2004, 2 May, 11).
22. Office of Science and Technology and the Wellcome Institute: ‘Science and the public: a review of science
communication and attitudes towards science in Britain’, Public Understanding of Science, 2001, 10, 315–330.
Dr Richard Ladle ([email protected]) is Director of Oxford University’s MSc programme in
Biodiversity, Conservation and Management. His research interests include the representation of conservation
in the media, assessment of public attitudes to conservation and the environment, conservation biogeography,
and the application of market-led solutions to environmental and conservation problems.
Dr Paul Jepson is a Senior Research Fellow in Conservation Practice at Oxford University’s Centre for the
Environment. He has worked in conservation for more than twenty years and was previously Director of
BirdLife Indonesia (1991–97). He consults for leading NGOs, the World Bank and independent thinktanks on
protected area planning, wildlife trade and international governance.
Professor Robert Whittaker is Professor of Biogeography and Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford University.
He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biogeography and writes extensively on all aspects of island biogeography
and conservation.
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